1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to high-density shelving and equipment storage systems and equipment storage management and more particularly to storing electronic and non-electronic equipment.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Datacenters are designed and constructed to optimize power and cooling requirements for a plurality of electric components such as power supplies, memory units, network appliances and servers. Since their introduction into datacenters, most of these electric devices have been adapted to fit into rack mountable appliance chassis. Rack mountable electric appliance chassis are typically constructed of steel sheet metal which adds considerable weight and mass to the overall electric component. In datacenters, the steel appliance chassis housing the electric components are then mounted into standardized equipment racks.
In general, equipment racks are produced in standard sizes such as “full height” that are approximately six feet in height, or “half high” racks that are approximately three feet in height. The equipment racks are designed to receive electronic appliances of variable height based upon a standardized scale referred to as the “Rack Unit”, “RU” or “U”, a unit of measure equal to 1.75 inches (44.45 mm). Thus, a standard full height 42U equipment rack could store forty-two 1U, or twenty-one 2U electronic component appliance chassis. The 19″ rack mounting fixture includes two parallel metal strips (commonly referred to as “posts”, “panel mounts” and “rack rails”) standing vertically. The posts are 0.625 inch (15.88 mm) wide, and are separated by a distance of 17.75 inches (450.85 mm) for the mounting of the electronic equipment chassis, thus providing a front plane appliance attachment width of 19 inches (482.6 mm) and effectively limiting the maximum width of equipment to 17.75″ (450.85 mm) with a minimum height of 1U or 1.75 inches (44.45 mm).
Known initially as “relay racks,” equipment racks were adapted by the computer industry from 19-inch switching and signaling equipment racks originally introduced by the telecommunications and railroad industry in the late 19th century. Equipment racks initially included two posts and are, therefore, commonly known as “two-post racks.” To accommodate larger electronic components, two sets of racks were implemented to support the front and back of larger electronic equipment chassis and are referred to as “four-post racks.” Legacy datacenters were commonly constructed on a raised floor framework supporting 24″ square removable floor tiles. Ultimately, four-post equipment racks were integrated into steel box cabinets with a standardized width of 24″ (600-610 mm) that also aligns with the layout of raised floor tiles. Legacy equipment racks are typically 800 mm or 1000 mm in depth though specific depths vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. The industry standard four-post racks commonly found in datacenters today are typically enclosed in a steel cabinet and positioned in rows on 24-inch centers.
A difficulty of such a rack cabinet system is that the cabinet is typically shipped in assembled form with a significant cost of shipping at a fixed standard height to fit upright through the average door. This legacy equipment rack design effectively limits horizontal and vertical space utilization in the datacenter. It requires each 17.75-inch-wide stack of equipment chassis to occupy a 24-inch width of horizontal floor space, and limits vertical space utilization to the height of the static equipment rack design, not the ceiling height or equipment density potential of the datacenter.
Many other difficulties exist within current rack cabinet architectures. Although the typical rack cabinet is made of a steel or aluminum box frame construction for strength to handle the static loads of legacy rack mounted equipment, current design approaches add significant width and mass to the front profile and footprint of the rack cabinet without addressing the additional dynamic load requirements of modern high density equipment, specifically in potentially high-seismic-activity geographic regions. The current design limitations not only affect the size, but also the total mass of existing rack cabinet systems, significantly impacting material usage and floor space utilization while failing to meet the potential dynamic load requirements in seismically active areas. Inversely, the current seismically engineered and rated racks that are available to address modern dynamic load requirements extend the mass and material usage of steel or aluminum box construction even further. This adds even more weight, mass and cost to the rack cabinet, without reducing the overall footprint, or increasing space utilization in the modern data center.
Though much has changed in computing and telecommunications equipment over the past decades, there has been relatively little change in equipment rack design and to better address the densities and efficiencies of modern electronic components and how they are utilized. This not only affects the size, but also the total mass of existing rack cabinet systems, significantly impacting material usage and floor space utilization. As data centers adopt virtualization and cloud computing to achieve higher levels of efficiencies utilizing large arrays of dense homogeneous power-efficient equipment, the current art of rack cabinet equipment significantly limits more efficient datacenter designs as well as the utilization of space in existing facilities.